Tuesday, August 23, 2016

We've had an extensive demonstration of how to enable Swagger UI for CXF endpoints returning Swagger documents for a while but the only 'problem' was that our demos only showed how to unpack a SwaggerUI module into a local folder with the help of a Maven plugin and make these unpacked resources available to browsers.
It was not immediately obvious to the users how to activate SwaggerUI and with the news coming from a SpringBoot land that apparently it is really easy over there to do it it was time to look at making it easier for CXF users.
So Aki, Andriy and myself talked and this is what CXF 3.1.7 users have to do:

For example, run a description_swagger2 demo. After starting a server go to the CXF Services page and you will see:

Click on the link and see a familiar Swagger UI page showing your endpoint's API.

Have you wondered what do some developers mean when they say it is a child's play to try whatever they have done ? You'll find it hard to find a better example of it after trying Swagger UI with CXF 3.1.7 :-)

Note in CXF 3.1.8-SNAPSHOT we have already fixed it to work for Blueprint endpoints in OSGI (with the help from Łukasz Dywicki). SwaggerUI auto-linking code has also been improved to support some older browsers better.

Besides, CXF 3.1.8 will also offer a proper support for Swagger correctly representing multiple JAX-RS endpoints based on the fix contributed by Andriy and available in Swagger 1.5.10 or when API interface and implementations are available in separate (OSGI) bundles (Łukasz figured out how to make it work).

Before I finish let me return to the description_swagger2 demo. Add a cxf-rt-rs-service-description dependency to pom.xml. Start the server and check the services page:

Of course some users do and will continue working with XML-based services and WADL is the best language available around to describe such services. If you click on a WADL link you will see an XML document returned. WADLGenerator can be configured with an XSLT template reference and if you have a good template you can get UI as good as this Apache Syncope document.

Monday, August 8, 2016

The very first check some new users may do these days, while evaluating your JAX-RS implementation, can be: how well is it integrated into SpringBoot ?

And the good news is that Apache CXF 3.1.7 users can start working with SpringBoot real fast.

We have left it somewhat late. It is hard to prioritize sometimes on various new requirements. And see some users moving away. In such cases the community support is paramount. And the Power of Open Source Collaboration came to the rescue once again when it was really needed.

I'd like to start with thanking James for providing an initial set of links to various SpringBoot documentation pages and reacting positively to the initial code we had. But you know yourself - sometimes we all value some little 'starters' - the initial code contributions :-)

And then we had a Spring Boot expert coming in and getting the process moving. Vedran Pavic helped me to create the auto-configuration and starter modules for JAX-RS and JAX-WS, patiently explained how his initial contribution works, how these modules have to be designed, and helped with the advice throughout the process. I felt like I passed some SpringBoot qualification exam once we were finished which let me continue enhancing the JAX-RS starter independently before CXF 3.1.7 was released.

CXF Spring Boot starters are now documented at this page which is also linked to from a Spring Boot README listing the community contributions.

If you are working with CXF JAX-RS then do check this section. See the demos and get excited about the ease with which you can enable JAX-RS endpoints, their Swagger API docs (and auto-link Swagger UI - the topic of the next post).

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

I said in one of my earlier posts I'd share some thoughts I've had during the years on re-using vs re-implementing while working on various CXF projects. Some of it may be a bit CXF specific but most of it might be interest to non-CXF developers too.

When the time comes to implement a new feature the immediate decision that needs to be taken is how you do it. In general it is always a good idea to re-use a quality 3rd party library that can help in realizing the new feature fast.

Consider a task of providing a UI interface to have Swagger JSON documents nicely presented. One can invest the time and write UI scripts and pages. Or one can download a well-known Swagger UI module.

Another example: one needs a collection sort algorithm implementation which will do faster than Java Collections code. One can invest a time and write a new library or look around and try an Apache or Google library.

In both cases re-using the existing solution will most likely be better and help deliver the higher-level, complete offering faster.

Things may get more complicated when one works on a project in a competitive space. For example, at some point there were 6 active JAX-RS Java implementation projects, with other non JAX-RS implementations such as the one offered by Spring adding up to the total number.

When you work on a project like that one a number of important decisions need to be made: how complete you'd like your project to be ? Is supporting HTTP verbs and reading and writing the data is all what is needed ? What sort of security support around the service you'd like to provide ? What other extensions should your project have ? How would you like your project be recognized - as a library or something bigger that offers all sort of relevant support for people writing the HTTP services ?

The higher the 'ambitions' of such a project the more likely the 're-implementing' becomes a viable option, nearly a necessity in some cases. In fact re-implementing is going all around at such projects.

I've been involved in a fair bit of re-implementation projects.

To start with we started implementing JAX-RS at a time when Jersey was already high. Why ? To have Apache CXF open to users with different preferences on how to do HTTP services. It was hard at times but it was really never simply because we wanted to prove we could do it.

The latest 're-implementation' was JOSE. Why ? I won't deny I was keen to work with the low-level security code closer, but overall, I wanted a CXF Security Story be more complete. Implementing it vs re-using the quality libraries I listed at the Wiki let us tune and re-work the implementation for it to be better integrated with the JAX-RS and Core security support so many times that it would be highly unlikely to happen if I were working with a 3rd party library.

I do not think re-implementing in an open way is not healthy. For example it has been acknowledged that having many JAX-RS implementations around helped to make JAX-RS more popular. Re-implementing may offer more options to users.

Or, reimplementing can prove a complete loss of time. Here are some basic 'guidelines' if you decide to try to re-implement in the Open Source:
- think not twice but many times before you try it
- if you feel the urge then do it, get the experience, make the mistakes, next time you will do the best choice
- never expect that once you re-implement something then everyone will stop using whatever they use and switch to what you have written - a lot of clever developers are working full time
- if you'd like others to use your project then you absolutely must love working with the users, don't even start if you think that it will be up to the Customer Support
- you need to have a support of your colleagues
- expect that the only 'remuneration' you will have is the non-stop work to keep the project constantly evolving